


thumbnail sketches for zoning changes

by Grassy



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Body Swap, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Magical Accidents, Past Forced Sex Swap, Trope Bingo Round 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 21:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15105254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grassy/pseuds/Grassy
Summary: like some sleep he feared he’d never wake from.





	thumbnail sketches for zoning changes

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Body Swap
> 
> Post-canon future fic. Canon compliant, so far as I can tell, but if I ever come back to write in this 'verse, who knows if it'll stay that way.
> 
> **Please read the fic tags!** I don't want to trigger anyone, so please take a look and keep yourselves safe, m'kay. :)
> 
> Title and summary are from the poem [Half-Ourselves & Half-Not](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/52878/half-ourselves-half-not) by Colin Cheney.

“Ohh, boy.”

“Well… Girl, technically. Since you just _had_ to go touching stuff _curse by a witch and all_.”

“ _Really_ , Mabel? That’s what you’re stuck on, right now?”

“ _Yes, Dipper_. Since, y’know,” Mabel gestured between their bodies with what were currently her hands, “I’m you and you’re me. And I know neither of us is cool with that.”

“Oh, this is _bad_. Bad, bad, b-”

Mabel—Mipper?—cut him off with a forceful finger to the lips.

“We’ll fix it. It’s gonna be okay, Dip-Dop.” Mabel’s (current) voice gentled as she pulled her brother (Dabel?) into a hug. “This isn’t like the last,” she paused, considering, “last, _last_ body weirdness thing. Heck, we’ve even done this before!”

“It was a lot easier being in your body when we were twelve, Mabel. We’re a lot more different now than we were similar then.”

“True. But just keep that in mind—you’re wearing my body and I’m wearing yours. It’s not that our bodies have changed, it’s that we’ve changed our bodies. No. Wait.” Her brow furrowed as she contemplated the twistiness of her words.

“I know what you meant to say,” Dipper sighed, leaning into her hold. Even in a different body, Mabel still gave great hugs.

He did understand, really, and it did help to know that he was currently wearing _Mabel’s_ body. Dipper remembered all too well the time Mabel was worried over him comparing their current situation to. But this time around, it wasn’t that he’d had his own body turned into the opposite sex, and that made all the difference. It was still uncomfortable, but after the initial panic had passed he wasn’t weighed down by the same sort of dysphoria as he had been then. (The body weirdness in between then and now had been more irritating than anything. Especially the time with the _ears_ and the _tail_ —for all that his life was strange, Dipper had less than no desire to be a catboy like in some stupid anime. Though Mabel had been sad to see them go. _Typical_.)

For now, though, he focused on the differences between _that time_ and their current situation. The weight of Mabel’s hair in it’s loose braid; her differing body mass and center of gravity; the bare strip of belly between her crop top sweater and jeans. That was all Mabel. It wasn’t his clothes, his hair, his glasses—and a body so very different from Dipper’s own that all he could see were the similarities. Especially with how he’d instinctively _known_ it as familiar on a physical level, somehow, due to the magic fuckery.

But, oh, how his mind had been screaming at the wrongness of it all.

(That Dipper hadn’t handled the situation well was an understatement. Barring old, lingering trauma—which he’d begun learning both how to manage and how to ask for help when needed after that first summer in Gravity Falls—and the memories of Bill and a sock puppet, Dipper had let his rage consume him in a way that had left Mabel wary. Not because she was afraid of him—after Gravity Falls, even at their worst they still trusted one another; no matter the fallout—but because she worried that he wasn’t keeping his own safety in mind at all. And _that_ she wouldn’t stand for.

No matter how priceless the relic had been, Dipper hadn’t cared then and never would—his only regret had been not destroying the damned thing sooner, before it affected him at all.)

“ _Ugh_.” Dipper pulled out of Mabel’s arms, shaking his head as if to rid it of the memories to keep his mind in the now. “Why do these things always happen to us?”

“Statistically speaking? Because we’re the idiots that go looking for this kinda thing. At least Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford get to, like, punch evil merpeople—not Mermando—and hug sea monsters. We just get all the creepy and crazy and downright _stupid_ stuff.” Mabel wilted at the end of her diatribe; an odd sight, considering. She really did not wear the extra inches well, despite her easy movements; body language and all.

Dipper studied her, morose and slouching, and knew that things couldn’t continue on as they were.

“Yeah, okay. Fine. After we deal with this situation, we’ll go on a vacation. A _real_ vacation this time.”

She perked up, eyes wide behind his glasses (weird, weird, _so weird_ ). “Really?”

“Really.”

“You can’t take it back this time, Dipper.”

“Barring an imminent apocalyptic scenario or us literally stumbling across a case, I won’t. Though we will have to time things right, okay? We promised we’d visit Gravity Falls when Ford and Stan returned from their latest trip, after all, and we’ll want time to catch up with Soos and Melody and their ki _gehh_ -”

Mabel might not be in her own—much more highly trained and physically deadly—body, but despite not having mastery over his own, she knew full well how to cut off a person’s air with a hug. The extra reach from his height just gave her a greater advantage.

“Yayyy!!! Thank you, thank you, _thank you_ , Dipper!”

Squirming from her grip enough to catch his breath, Dipper bit back the urge to sigh. Because Mabel shouldn’t _need_ to thank him for their taking a break. But Dipper knew he was the reason they’d kept putting it off; no matter that most of their last several cases had been serious enough Mabel had agreed they needed to do something immediately, rather than take the time to see if someone else could handle things. They’d be risking burnout if they kept on as they were and that- that would just be too dangerous, considering their lives.

“You’re welcome. But before that, we’ve gotta get back into our own bodies.”

“And then,” Mabel held out a fist for him to bump, “there’s a witch who needs a talking-to about forgetting where she’s misplaced her old experiments.”

“Yeah,” Dipper smirked. “A ‘talking-to.’”

“Talking, ass-kicking. Same thing, really.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

_Fistbump_.


End file.
